Amazon‘s annual holiday release featured a blizzard of whimsical non-statistics about all of the things they sold during the busiest shopping time of the year. Among the ebook-related bits, “the most popular Kindle book purchased on Christmas day was The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey.” The most gifted Kindle book during the holidays was the self-published Rath’s Deception by Piers Platt, and the most borrowed book all year in the Kindle Unlimited subscription program was No Ordinary Billionaire by J.S. Scott. The Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row Journal, a subscription-based supplement of book reviews and more, will drop the print version in the […]
People, Etc.
Former BEA director of education Mark Dressler died December 23 from cancer. Dressler also programmed sessions for the Frankfurt Book Fair, and was co-owner of a wine shop in his home of Traverse City, MI. USA Today named Girl on the Train author Paula Hawkins as their “author of the year.” They write: “Before 2015, no one had heard of Hawkins, 43, who previously wrote chick lit under the pseudonym Amy Silver. Then Train hurtled into bookstores on Jan. 13 and immediately clicked with readers desperate for the next Gone Girl.” Riverhead has sold over 4 million units in the US. But it […]
2015: The Year In Mergers
The intense M&A activity from 2013 and 2014 carried over into 2015, though the sale of domestic trade publishers was modest, so the common perception was of fewer mergers. In trade, the biggest deal might be the one that never happened. Up until the end of the summer, it was widely expected that Pearson would exercise their option to have Bertelsmann buy out their 47 percent share in Penguin Random House. Instead, Pearson raised cash by selling the Financial Times and then their share in The Economist, and a sale to Bertelsmann — whether outright, or in the “steps” that Bertelsmann […]
More to Come — And A Free Trial to Check It Out
We’ll be back tomorrow with our last “scheduled” edition for this week, including a look back at the year in M&A, though PublishersMarketplace remains in operation 24/7 and will continue to present news, deals, bestsellers, jobs and more as they come in (including 7 new job listings just from yesterday). And we will return next week, at least occasionally, with more unique insights and stats and whatever news there is to share, at least for our PM member/Publishers Lunch Deluxe audience. In the meantime, we are bringing the traditional holiday free trial offer at PublishersMarketplace.com: Join now and check out everything […]
Which Print Is Back, Where? A Nuanced View of 2015 Stats So Far
It’s a little too soon to close the books on trade publishing statistics and trends for the year, with reporting for the two biggest sales weeks still to come, but the “good year for print books” meme has been going strong since September and will continue through other popular accounts in the weeks to come. This turns out to be deja vu all over again, as we note from our own archives that the exact same “print is back” story was in circulation this time a year ago — when Nielsen Bookscan 2014 year-end numbers showed total print sales across […]
The Absolutely Best of the Best Books of 2015
We are calling the voting final a little early this year for our comprehensive aggregation of the very best books of the year since so many of the “best of 2015” lists have already run (with an asterisk for USA Today, which is still holding out for the very end of the year; post updated later to include USA Today’s top 10). Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates is the clear winner of “book of the year” honors, taking more votes than any book since we started these compilations many years ago (surpassing Katherine Boo’s record of 29 picks), […]